It’s Monday, 1PM, and you just finished that fiscal earnings summary for your boss. Phew!

At 3PM sharp, you’re scheduled to head up a major boardroom meeting with a client in from overseas and you are seriously considering canceling that lunchtime facial despite how desperately you need it.

From late nights at the office to stressing out over your unruly workload while at home, your face is showing signs of wear-and-tear. With a pimple here and a new wrinkle there (which you swear didn’t exist last week), your Olay bedtime beauty ritual just isn’t cutting it anymore. Whatever is a busy worker bee in the big city supposed to do?

Reserve 60 minutes of your precious time, ideally when the Big Cheese is on a conference call, duck out the backdoor to a haven of serenity, your personal rendition of a “Zen palate,” head to Skinklinic – a tranquil oasis in the heart of bustling midtown jungle. The minute you enter the premises, wandering through a lush green entryway in similar design to a Japanese tea garden (Koi fish excluded), you’re immediately overcome with a soothing sensation, stress unleashing itself as if you were chanting your first set of ohm’s in yoga class.

As you are greeted by the friendly staff, offered bottled water (because we all know the first step to beautiful skin is proper hydration), you fill out the requisite questionnaire. Drink: Yes. Sunbathe: Yup. 8-hours of sleep at night? Not even close. Ample fruits and vegetables in your diet? Does the OJ in your Screwdriver count? Yikes. Into the treatment room you go.

Personally, I was a candidate for a glycolic peel to even out my skin tone and generate cell turnover – sounds scary but certainly efficient – and was reassured by my skin practitioner that it was going to be piece-o-cake easy.

Ten minutes later, I can surmise that was an overstatement. With a few quick swipes of a cloth (one to cleanse, another to treat, finally to soothe and protect), I was done. I was just settling into the chair, daydreaming in the recline and badda boom: Finito! No painful extractions, no mask to apply, in-and-out, like the burger joint in California.

Upon leaving with an arsenal of products that would work to enhance the results of the glycolic peel, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and magically looked like I had returned from a week at the Canyon Ranch Spa – rested, healthy, and most importantly, youthful. Maybe the bars will start asking for my ID again?

2:45 PM. Sneak back to the fluorescent lights of your cubicle, take one last run-through of your presentation and when you nail it, let those boardroom stiffs wonder who the good looking-impostor is at the helm of it all…